OGONEK

Ą	ą
Ę	ę
Į	į
Ų	ų

The 'ogonek' (Polish for "little tail", the diminutive of ''ogon'') is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.

Contents

Languages that use the ogonek

Values

Nasalization

Length

Tone

Typographical notes

LaTeX2e

See also

External links

Languages that use the ogonek

★ Polish (letters ''ą'', ''ę'')

★ Lithuanian (''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ų'')

★ Creek, Navajo and Western Apache (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''ę'', ''ęę'', ''į'', ''įį'', , )

★ Chiricahua and Mescalero (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''ę'', ''ęę'', ''į'', ''įį'', ''ų'', ''ųų''),

★ Tutchone and Älvdalen Dalecarlian ,

★ Gwich'in.

★ Modern scholarly transcriptions of Old Norse (letter '')
Example in Polish:
:
:
:: — Jan Brzechwa, ''''
Example in Lithuanian:
:
:
:: — Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, ''Margi sakalai''
Example in Älvdalen Dalecarlian:
:"Ja, eð war įe plåg að gęslkallum, dar eð war slaik uondlostjyner i gęslun."
:: — Vikar Margit Andersdotter, ''I fäbodlivet i gamla tider''.

Values

Nasalization

The use of the ogonek to indicate nasality is common in the transcription of the indigenous languages of the Americas. This usage originated in the orthographies created by Christian missionaries to transcribe these languages. Later, the practice was continued by Americanist anthropologists and linguists who still follow this convention in phonetic transcription to the present day (see Americanist phonetic notation).
The ogonek is also used in academic transliteration of Old Church Slavonic and Old Norse. In Polish, Old Church Slavonic, Navajo, Western Apache, Chiricahua, and Älvdalen Dalecarlian it indicates that the vowel is nasalized.

Length

In Lithuanian, where it formerly indicated nasalization which is no longer distinctive, it indicates that a vowel is long. The Lithuanian word for "ogonek" is ''nosinė'' which literally means "nasal".

Tone

In Navajo, Chiricahua, Western Apache, and Mescalero it can be combined with the acute and grave accents where it indicates high tone, or in long vowels high, falling, rising tone (e.g. ''ą́'', , ''į́į''). In the orthography conventions of Willem de Reuse, Western Apache has combinations of ogonek and macron (e.g. , '').

Typographical notes

The ogonek should be almost the same size as a descender (in larger type sizes may be relatively quite shorter) and should not be confused with the cedilla or comma diacritic marks used in other languages.
The HTML/Unicode numbers for ogonek letters are:

Upper Case			Lower Case
Letter	HTML	Alt Code	Letter	HTML	Alt Code
	Ą	Alt + 0260		ą	Alt + 0261
	Ę	Alt + 0280		ę	Alt + 0281
	Į	Alt + 0302		į	Alt + 0303
	Ǫ	Alt + 0490		ǫ	Alt + 0491
	Ų	Alt + 0370		ų	Alt + 0371
	˛	Alt + 0731

LaTeX2e

In LaTeX2e macro k will typeset a letter with ogonek, if it is supported by the font encoding , e.g. k{a} will typeset ''ą''. The package TIPA activated by using the command "usepackage{tipa}", offers a different way: " extpolhook{a}" will produce ''ą''.

See also

★ Ę

★ Cedilla

★ Comma (punctuation)

★ ᚬ

External links

★ Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents

★ Polish Diacritics — How To?

★ Förslag till en enhetlig stavning för älvdalska (March, 2005)